I was selected by SymPy to work on their plotting module as part of GSoC2012. So I will be spending the next three months working on a plotting module to plot implicit functions. Implicit functions are difficult to plot by simple meshing. Though we might get a good result with simple meshing for most of the functions, it can be quite erroneous for some of the functions. So I will be using interval arithmetic to provide a way to plot implicit functions. My GSoC application can be found here. I will be atlast making a lasting contribution to an open - source software.

There are a lot of posts on how contributing to a open source software is the best way to sharpen your programming skills. But lot of people are too afraid to approach an organization and start contributing. There is an impending fear that people working on these projects are very stud(intelligent) people and they might get annoyed at your ignorance. Well, let me tell you this, people in an open source project are really nice. They don’t get annoyed very easily and they are ready to help you with everything. They correct all your mistakes with lots of patience and help you with improving your code. I think getting your code reviewed is the best way to improve your programming skills after you have reached a certain stage.

I was pretty much amazed with SymPy’s code base. Its so neat and clean that any newcomer can just look at the docstrings and can deduce the functionality of every function. Though my experience is limited, I haven’t seen a better codebase than SymPy’s. I am still looking at their codebase and the amount of modularity continues to amaze me. So if anybody is interested in contributing to a python open source project, then consider contributing to SymPy, for you will learn a lot on how a python project has to be structured.

I will be using this blog to update about my GSoC project and hopefully I will learn a lot during this period.